These Tattoos Change Color When Your Health Fluctuates

DermalAbyss monitors sodium and blood sugar levels.

People often get tattoos to express their individuality, or to commemorate a significant moment in their lives. But soon tattoos could be used to help monitor our health, too.

MIT and Harvard Medical School are developing a tattoo ink called DermalAbyss , which helps track blood sugar and sodium by changing colors when those levels fluctuate.

On the MIT website it states that DermalAbyss uses biotechnology to replace traditional tattoo inks with biosensors that change colors based on variations in interstitial fluid in the body.

"The pH sensor changes between purple and pink, the glucose sensor shifts between blue and brown; the sodium and a second pH sensor fluoresce at a higher intensity under UV light," it says in their research report.

The report points out that this technology could change the lives of people with diabetes by doing away with the traditional insulin monitoring system of pricking the skin.

If people with diabetes had tattoos made from the color-changing ink, they would be able to check their insulin levels simply by looking at the color of their ink.

The DermalAbyss is still in its research stage and, as of yet, there are no plans to turn it into a product or to start clinical trials. However, with further research, the color-changing ink could one day be on the market, and help the lives of so many people who rely on alternative methods to check their health.